


Five-Five

by PyrophobicDragon



Series: Kinktober [2]
Category: Dragalia Lost (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Choking, Discussions of Suicide, M/M, Sexual Content, au-typical level of violence and deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-22 07:43:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21072377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PyrophobicDragon/pseuds/PyrophobicDragon
Summary: While walking through the city, Curran finds a kindred spirit.





	Five-Five

**Author's Note:**

> This is TECHNICALLY entry 17 for kinktober, prompted by "Choking," but I loved it so much that I needed to put it in its own space.
> 
> I have never read the Hunger Games. Please excuse any liberties!

Around him, the few people forced to be outside rushed to reach their destinations, huddling under coats or holding objects above their heads to protect themselves from the heavy rainfall. But Curran walked slowly, with no destination in mind. The rain almost hurt when it hit his bare head, but he didn’t mind. He liked the rain.

When the Capitol had fallen, his father and mother had packed up and moved. “Well,” his father had said briskly, “People will need new homes. Better homes, not those stupid mansions they had up there.” And Curran had reluctantly come along.

His father was right. There was much rebuilding to be done on the wreck of the Capitol. He spent his days working himself to the bone. It was good work. Work that helped people. Work he was used to. Work that required enough concentration that he didn’t have to think.

Some people still recognized him. He was vaguely surprised; it was more than ten years ago, that his face was plastered on every TV for six months. What was even more surprising is that even people who recognized him treated him kindly. He blamed that on Lathna. Even though she was now a woman, she still reminded everyone she met that her adoptive older brother had volunteered solely to save the life of another orphan child.

The purpose of his walk was to enjoy the rain, not dwell on the past. He had survived the Games, the Capitol had fallen, he was free.

He stopped at a crosswalk. Someone had fixed up the streetlight, as it was a well-traversed crossing for pedestrians and supply-toting vehicles alike. He looked up from his feet to watch the rain fall, illuminated by the light of the streetlights.

He spotted someone across the way.

Like him, he was stopped on the street corner. He stood out. People were moving around him, in front of him, yet he stood there with an umbrella over his shoulder, like a rock standing in a river.

Even from this far away, Curran could see his red eyes.

He blinked. Once, twice. Then the light changed. And the man was moving, crossing the street across from Curran, walking slow and unhurried, like he had nowhere to go and no place to be.

Curran watched him until he disappeared around the corner.

***

The next three days were cloudy, but with nary a drop of precipitation falling from the sky. Curran sawed beams and built furniture. They traded the pieces he made for supplies, brought here by other people hoping to escape bad memories in their district. 

On the fourth day, it rained. Curran put his coat on and went for a walk. Though his pace was still slow, today he walked with a destination in mind.

He arrived at the same crosswalk. He crossed the street, once, twice, and ended up on the opposite corner. Then he stood and waited. 

He watched cars and trucks go by. He watched people hurrying by, and wondered where they were going, what they were doing out here in the rain. 

Right when he was wondering if he was waiting for no reason, the rain stopped hitting him.

He looked up. 

There was a black umbrella over his head.

He looked to his left.

The man was there. His name was Heinwald.

After his victory, Curran tried to avoid watching any other games. But it was impossible to avoid hearing about this man.

His older sister's fiance had volunteered for the Games after he was picked. His sister had immediately volunteered as well. The night before the two of them left for the Capitol, the fiance had gone into the father’s bedroom and murdered him. No one had found the body until the next morning, after all the fanfare was done, and no one was able to pinpoint the murderer until Heinwald deduced the truth. By then, it was too late--the fiance was long gone, already being trained to kill.

The fiance was killed early on in the games. The sister commited suicide soon after. And, a few years later, this man had volunteered.

He was an early unfavorite. He had volunteered despite being thin and weedy. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had never done a day of manual labor or even any combat training in his life. People had scoffed, saying that he was throwing his life--the life two people had died for--away. He was rude, uncaring, and overly smug. He had gotten barely any screen time after the first few interviews went horribly south. And during the games, despite managing to attract the ire of all the other tributes, he disappeared so thoroughly that even the all-seeing cameras lost him.

When there were three tributes left, he reappeared. 

Only one soul alive knows what happened next. Somehow, some way, all the cameras suddenly lost power at the same time.

When they came back online two minutes and fifteen seconds later, three tributes were dead, and he was declared the winner.

...Which was all to say that he was infamous.

It was strange, watching people walk by the two of them without giving them a second glance. After all, Heinwald should stand out. With his piercing red eyes, his long two-toned hair, his glasses, and the gold hearing aid that glinted in light of passing cars.

He didn’t say anything. He just looked at Curran.

In the end, Curran had to look away. He looked up, past the brim of the umbrella, watching water drip. He said, “I like the rain.”

“Your Game was desert-themed.” 

Curran nodded, wondering if he should be surprised or not.

He had been so thirsty, all of the time. Some of the tributes drank the poisoned water and died. One or two of them had drank blood.

He had resisted. Even when some of the tributes were gifted water, he waited, letting the other tributes stalk the lucky ones and fight for precious water. He waited as long as he could, until he tasted sand and iron every time he swallowed. Then he had struck.

Including him, there were only six left. One of the tributes had an axe, though he knew she didn’t know how to use it. So he went for her first. When he found her, she was curled up, weak from dehydration, but she had still tried to fight back. He had strangled her, and it felt more like a mercy kill than his first murder.

He killed the next three with his newly-acquired axe, splattering him with blood like something out of the campy horror movies he used to watch with Lathna and Lowen. He had hoped neither of them were watching him now.

The last one, a Career, had fought back hard. He strangled him too, pressing his thumbs not against his windpipe, as most people would, but against the tragically thin arteries that delivered blood to the brain. He was unconscious within minutes. He was dead soon after.

When he had been taken back, he stood underneath the shower, letting it wash away the blood and sand and grit, and opened his mouth and drank water until he was sick.

“What’s your damage?” asked Curran in the present.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the side of his lip quirk upwards. “It reminds me that I am alive.”

***

The next day, even though it wasn’t raining, he took a walk. This time, Heinwald was waiting for him, without an umbrella.

“What are you doing in the Capitol?”

“I’m doing secretarial work, sorting through old files that were recovered,” Heinwald replied, which surprised Curran somewhat. He had gone home and looked him up. One of his skills was that he was an actual genius and savant. It seemed a waste of talent to put him on secretarial work.

Then he added, “Not many people can bear to read about the atrocities that were committed.”

_ But you can. _ It went without saying.

***

“You know, I killed five people in my Game.”

“Mmm.” They weren’t on the street corner. Heinwald had come in when Curran was about to take his lunch break. He had brought Curran lunch. But he himself didn’t eat anything, only drinking tea.

As someone who often felt the pangs of too many missed meals, it unnerved him to see someone sitting in front of him not eating when he had a full spread. He had subtly pushed his fruit cup closer to Heinwald, just to see what he would do.

“Not necessarily the highest kill count ever recorded, but you did kill a fifth of the people in your game,” said Heinwald, as if he were discussing the weather. “Quite brutal kills, too. But I must commend you on your strangulation methodology. The general instinct, especially in a state of panic, is to wrap the hands around the throat and squeeze, but that in incredibly inefficient.”

Curran ate his sandwich. It was weird, hearing someone be so matter-of-fact about his Game. Most people spoke of it with an air of awe, fear, or pity. Mostly pity, nowadays. 

“I didn’t feel bad about it,” Curran said. “I mean, I did, a little, but not as much as I think I should have. I just thought...it was them or me.”

“Many people experience dulled emotions in a stressful situation.”

Curran watched Heinwald pull the fruit cup closer to him and peel open the lid. “Do you think I’m a psychopath?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Heinwald said dismissively. “Psychopathy has not been recognized in the DSM for decades now.”

Curran couldn’t help but chuckle. Somehow, that made him feel better.

“Besides,” Heinwald said, much softer, as he reached for Curran’s spoon, “You did express some regrets just now, which is incompatible with anti- or asociality.”

Curran balled up the paper his sandwich had been wrapped in. “Are you a psychopath?”

“Did you not just hear me?” Heinwald scoffed.

***

“I had a dream last night. My first one in ages.”

“False. You dream every night, you simply don’t remember,” said Heinwald.

“Oh.” Curran didn’t know that. He learned a lot, hanging out with Heinwald. Heinwald once complimented him on his intelligence. When Curran denied being smart, Heinwald had told him that it was his lack of education holding him back, not a lack of neural connectability, pointing out that Curran’s memory, compassion, and reasoning ability were “top-notch.” After that conversation, Heinwald seemed to be making a point of trying to subtly educate Curran in all sorts of different topics. And, much to Curran’s surprise, he was retaining his informal lessons pretty well.

Though the time that Heinwald had refused to speak to him in English, answering all of his questions in an absolute plethora of different languages, was infuriating. Curran learned no words from that, except how to say fuck you in Dutch, which Heinwald had specifically taught him afterwards.

“Was it the retention that surprised you? Or the contents?”

Curran hesitated. “Both, I guess.”

He had dreamed that he was hiding in a featureless white office. From what, he couldn’t remember. All that mattered was that he didn’t get caught.

Heinwald had walked in the room. He didn’t feel like a threat. But Curran had walked over and wrapped his hands around his throat.

He woke up before he could do more than squeeze.

“The contents, then,” Heinwald said, and Curran rolled his eyes.

“Fucking mind-reader.”

Heinwald didn’t reply.

“Aren’t you going to ask what I dreamed of?” Curran asked.

“No. You obviously don’t feel comfortable sharing it with me, so I won’t press.” Curran looked at him with surprise, but Heinwald only smiled. “Though I will say my curiosity is killing me.”

***

“How did you kill the last tributes?” asked Curran.

Heinwald didn’t look up from the report he was reading. “The same way I killed the man who came into my room after he paid to sleep with me: by convincing them that their lives weren’t worth living.”

Curran knew, or at least heavily suspected. But he was still speechless.

“I am utterly unlikable, but I can be very persuasive when I want to be. And though I was recorded as having skills with knives, that was an utter lie; I had never held so much as a kitchen knife in my life.” He finally looked up, but only enough so he could look at Curran through his lashes. “My most potent weapons are my brain and my larynx.”

“That’s what people said,” said Curran. “They said that the Gamekeepers cut the camera feed when they realized you were going in for the kill, to prevent a string of suicides across the country.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Heinwald said, turning a page on his report. “They wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to show off the gruesome three-versus-one death of the most reviled tribute in history.”

Curran had to admit that was true.

***

He dreamed again.

This time, Heinwald spoke. It was the garbled dream speech that didn’t really make sense, but Curran felt amused. But still, he wrapped his hands around his throat. As if he was disarming him.

***

A man was found dead in an alleyway. Suicide, said the makeshift police force. Or maybe an accident.

When Curran mentioned it offhand to Heinwald, he had looked up, looking more alive than he ever had in his life. 

It took...way too much effort, yet not as much as they expected. They were two amateurs, two ex-Victors, who had been working as a woodworker and a secretary, respectively. But some people respected them. They had been working as hard as anyone else to get the Capitol repaired and an actual, functional city, and people appreciated that, and were willing to talk.

They found the murderer. They threw him behind bars. They shook hands with the makeshift police force chief, and Heinwald said, calmly, “Look us up again if you have another mystery you need solved.”

They were an “us.” Curran looked at him, and thought about kissing him. 

Then he thought about strangling him, in a world of sand and dust.

***

He woke up with a raging hard-on. He sat up, mildly surprised. He hadn’t felt horny in a long time.

Suddenly, his dream came rushing back. And he nearly groaned out loud.

It wasn’t much, just skin and heat and noises pulled straight out of a porno, but in his bones he knew two very disturbing facts:

One, his partner in his dreams was Heinwald.

Two, he had been choking him.

***

Normally, if he had weird questions, he could float them up for Heinwald to inspect and answer. But he couldn’t go up to him and say,  _ hey is it weird for me to have wet dreams about strangling you? _

Well, he could. But he didn’t want to.

***

When Heinwald stepped out of the town hall after work late one rainy evening, Curran was waiting for him. He smiled as he opened his umbrella and descended the steps.

"It's not safe for you to be wandering around late at night anymore," Curran said gruffly. "Crime rates are going up recently."

"You should work for the police," said Heinwald, and Curran rolled his eyes. He's been trying to convince him that he should get a job doing something other than manual labor,  _ it is an absolute travesty if you don't use that brain of yours. _

Instead of walking directly to Heinwald's home, they took the long way there. The few people they passed didn't even raise their eyes to look at them.

They reached the small house Heinwald lived in. When he had first visited Heinwald's house, he was a little surprised that he lived alone, in a place where homes were desperately needed and many people lived crammed in apartments or hostels. Heinwald had told him that no one wanted to share a house with him.

Stopping in front of the door, Heinwald turned to look at Curran without making a move to go inside. He said nothing, just looking up at him. 

Curran looked down at him and thought about wrapping his hands around that smooth throat, covering up the thin black line wrapped around it like a permanent choker necklace.

He hastily took a step back.

Heinwald tilted his head at him. Eventually, he said, "I was a Victor too."

"With a kill count of zero."

Heinwald looked to his right, at the lone flickering street light far down the street. "Zero or five, depending on who you ask."

Curran paused. "Three tributes. That one Capitol man."

Heinwald smiled without looking at his direction. "Zero or five," he repeated. Then he looked back. "Thank you for walking with me. But I'd like to remind you that I am capable of defending myself. From anyone."

His eyes exuded a strange energy.

***

It rained the next day. Curran went on a walk.

He avoided the town hall, the small house, the street corner.

***

The day after that, he walked to the town hall. People looked at him as he wandered about, peering into rooms.

He found Heinwald in a small windowless office. It had no door. He knocked on the doorframe anyway, to get him to look up from the pile of papers in front of him.

Heinwald smiled when he saw him.

Curran came and sat on the edge of the desk, setting down a brown paper bag on the tabletop. Heinwald pulled it closer to himself and pulled out two sandwiches, two fruit cups, two spoons, a thermos of tea. Curran had forgotten to pack another cup, so they shared the thermos lid.

"Who was number five?" he asked.

"The night before they left for the games," Heinwald said, "I snuck into her room. He was there, too, as they had been talking. I told them that they should have let me go and die, because it was better than leaving me alone with my father." He reached over and took a sip of the tea. When he set the mug down, he was smiling. “So you can say, in a way, number five was actually number one.”

“I think we can debate the definition of what constitutes a kill,” said Curran.

Heinwald inclined his head. “We could. Would you like to?”

“Not right now.” He could feel it bubbling up inside of his throat. But he swallowed, unable to let it pop, and ate his sandwich.

It took him a few more minutes. He finished his fruit cup and set it aside. Then he said, “I dream about strangling you.”

Heinwald was unflappable. His face did not change at all.

“I don’t know. I think it’s because--my brain thinks you’re a threat, or something. Since you were--are--very dangerous. And since...the biggest problem I had in my games was that last guy, and he’s one of of two that I--I didn’t kill him with my axe.” He had spent many sleepless nights tossing and turning, and that was the best conclusion he had come to.

Heinwald’s expression finally changed. He looked...proud? “A marvelous hypothesis. Of course, I would have preferred if you did some research to find evidence supporting your claim, but we’ll make a psychologist out of you yet.”

“I’m not interested in becoming a psy--ugh, never mind.” Curran rolled his eyes.

Heinwald reached for his fruit cup. Curran frowned at him, then looked at his half-eaten sandwich. He pouted, but picked up his sandwich again anyways.

Around a mouthful of bread, he asked, “Is that all?”

“What?”

“Is that all you wanted to tell me?” he repeated.

“I--”  _ I have wet dreams where I’m strangling and fucking you. _ “No. Yes.”

“Hmm.” Heinwald set down his sandwich again. He swallowed the bite he was eating, washed it down with tea, and stood up.

When he kissed Curran, he tasted like rain.

***

It was a good thing that Heinwald lived alone. Curran couldn’t imagine trying to do anything at his place, where his parents and Lathna lived only a thin wall away. He felt embarrassed every time he kissed Heinwald within sight of his house.

They had fallen into a little routine. Curran would finish his work, and then go and meet Heinwald at his workplace. They would walk back to his house, eat a late dinner together. Sometimes they--fucked. Had sex. Made...love? Afterwards, Curran would put on his clothes, kiss him goodnight, and go back home.

They were on stage 5 of their nightly routine. 

“Are you sure about this?” he asked Heinwald for the thousandth time. That was not a part of their routine. That was exclusive for tonight.

Heinwald rolled his eyes. He was starting to get actively annoyed by Curran asking him all the time. He waggled the pen he was holding tight in his left hand at him. “It will be fine. I imagine it’ll be better than fine.”

“All right,” Curran said reluctantly, but he gave one one last kiss.

Heinwald felt so good around him. He thought he could never get tired of sliding inside of him, seeing that little pleased smile that he developed on his face as he pushed in.

This time, he stopped when he was inside of him. Using one hand to brace himself against the bed, he pressed the other one carefully against the base of his exposed throat.

He was careful not to press his against the lines he had drawn on Heinwald’s throat in marker, outlining the location of vessels. But he did press against his windpipe, slowly reducing his airflow.

Heinwald’s eyes slowly closed to a half-lidded position. His hand remained tight around the pen.

When he slowly released, Heinwald let out a  _ gutted _ gasp for air that went straight to his cock.

“Do that again. But actually move, this time.”

And so he did.

Heinwald was loud in bed. They both kinda were. But tonight, he was very quiet, only making noise when Curran released his throat and allowed him to breathe again.

Curran was sure he could push it further, hold Heinwald down until his vision started going black on the edges, choke him for more than ten seconds at a time. He couldn't quite do it yet. But he was already thinking of next time.

When Heinwald came, he came near-silently, with only a breathless wheeze of air. He came quicker than Curran was used to, which the nervous part of him considered a good sign. Curran let go of Heinwald’s throat one last time, hearing him gasping for breath as he braced himself against the thin mattress, fucking into Heinwald faster now that he was no longer focused on not killing his--

Boyfriend? Lover? Partner.

He came as well, with a groan, closing his eyes against the sight of Heinwald’s lax, fucked-out face. When he opened them again, Heinwald’s eyes were closed. He had a small smile on his face. His narrow chest expanded and contracted with breath. 

“I love you,” Curran said.

Heinwald cracked on eye open. “Are you sure that’s not the endorphins talking?”

“I don’t know what those are,” Curran said.

Heinwald laughed, a thin, wheezy laugh. “I’ll tell you later.”

Curran pulled out and slowly sat up, still in between Heinwald’s spread legs. He looked down at him. “Do you mind if I stay the night?”

His other eye opened. “Will your parents miss you?’

“I’ll deal with it tomorrow,” Curran replied. Then he flopped down on top of Heinwald, knocking the breath out of him in a quiet  _ oof _ , and kissed him. 

Heinwald’s bed was too small for two grown men to lie side-by-side. But that was okay.

***

  
The next morning, he walked Heinwald to work. Then he walked back home in the rain holding an  _ I love you too _ close to his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Heinwald is from District 2, and his father was truly a Capitol lapdog. Curran is from District 7. Louise, Lowen, and Lathna lived at an orphanage he volunteered his time at, and his parents adopted Lathna when Curran was chosen.
> 
> Heinwald deduced the continued existence of District 13.


End file.
